I communicate with brevity, repitition, with pictures I take & with as much kindness as I can muster. A good day can involve communicating something useful to others, maintaining relationships, looking around and seeing stuff & being creative. Four possible aspects of a good life are the effort to have strong relationships of any kind, a good internal mental life that is yours alone, having well-thought out views on politics and society & finding the virtues and good things in everyday living.Here is my autobiography. Please read all of NeilAquino.com

There much good to say about living in Houston and the Houston area. Houston is an interesting and fun place to explore. But one thing not good is our streets and highways. Can we please stop drunk driving, red light running and fighting on the roads?

The Houston-Galveston National Weather Service back to school update you see above is excellent. What kind of society do we have when the National Weather Service feels they have to say these basic things about heat to parents?

In any case, please do be careful. Get off the phone. Stop texting. Slow down.

Also---If there was no such thing as public schools and the State of Texas announced today they were starting such schools--though they would not in the current politcal climate--there would be all sorts of talk about "Government reeducation camps", "Obamaschools", "Forced detention of our children.", "breaking up families", a push to have bibles at every desk, the fact that kids clustered in a room are more susceptible to the transmission of ebola by Muslim kids recruited by ISIS and something or other about taking away our guns along with calls for in-school firing ranges to teach kids how to use a gun. The younger kids would start with Nerf guns.

As Senator and self-proclaimed Socialist Bernie Sanders runs a strong campaign for President of the United States, polls show that socialism is increasingly an acceptable idea among all Americans and among young Americans in particular.

In response to a Gallup poll in June, 47 percent of surveyors said they would vote for a socialist if their party nominated one, while 50 percent said they would not. Only four years ago, the Pew Research survey found that 31 percent of Americans reacted positively to the word “socialism,” while 60 percent reacted negatively.Also---The 2011 Pew Research survey showed that among 18-to-29-year olds, 49 percent had a positive view of socialism, while 47 percent had a positive view of capitalism.